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15 Minutes of Fame: World of Warcraft player "levels down" with game-related diet
From Hollywood celebrities to the guy next door, millions of people have made World of Warcraft a part of their lives. How do you play WoW? We're giving each approach its own 15 Minutes of Fame. So how much weight have you lost since you started playing World of Warcraft? Wait, what's that? You've gained 10 pounds since the expansion launched and your guild started raiding again? Oh, good people of Azeroth ... It doesn't have to be that way. You can get lean and mean with WoW -- you simply start by Leveling Down. Leveling Down is a new blog and weight loss scheme put together by player Moriarity of Archimonde (US-A) after he found himself starting at too many pounds and not enough motivation. "One day, while playing WoW, I stumbled upon the idea that I could turn my own weight loss into a game, much like WoW," he explains. "Every day that I ate what I was supposed to and did the proper amount of exercise, I would gain a level. And every day, I would do a blog post that would feature an area of the game where a character of my current level would be." So is the plan working? We'd say so -- as of the beginning of this week, Moriarity's broken the level 40 barrier and appears unstoppable.
Buff(ing) For BlizzCon: The final countdown!
Buff(ing) for BlizzCon is a bi-weekly fitness series written by ShrinkGeek authors Rafe Brox and Michael McGreevy. Join the WoW Insider team in getting in shape for the ultimate WoW geek event: BlizzCon 2010. BlizzCon is just over a month away, and in a few weeks, we'll be checking in with the folks here to see how well they managed to conquer their personal health and fitness goals for the big event. Obviously, we aren't going to be able to do the same for all of you who have been playing along at home, but we certainly hope that you've managed to keep focused and have made some changes that have had a positive impact on your life. But what if you haven't? The reality is that it's very easy to get excited about making positive changes, but it's another thing entirely to actually tough it out and make those changes permanent. Excitement wanes. Reality is a harsh mistress, and all of that extra energy you found to stop at the gym on the way home from work is harder to come across after the first few weeks. What was once fun can become a chore, and we all know that chores are easy to put aside if you aren't in the right mindset to do them. While you may have thought our Buffing For BlizzCon challenge was a neat idea at the beginning, it's quite possible that you have slipped a bit since we initially started the series. That's OK. Really. In fact, it's pretty normal. It does not, however, mean that you are a failure. Far from it.
Autom, the robot weight loss coach: we'll just keep the friends that lie to us, thanks
Autom is a tiny robot, and he's getting closer than ever to availability. His whole job? To coach you to lose weight... that's right, Autom is a dieting robot. You start off by entering the details of your diet, fitness level, and exercise into Autom's databank, and then he sits on your countertop and has daily 'conversations' with you -- which we assume are full of a lot of reassuring aphorisms and 'go get 'em' talk. Developed by Cory Kidd (who built the first iteration by hand) while studying at MIT, Autom is set to go into trials in the US sometime next year with a major insurance company. Now, we're all for healthy living, and everyone knows we love robots, but we're inclined to take a pass on Autom... if only because we can't stand to hear the truth 100 percent of the time. If you hit up the source link, you can see a video of the little guy in action. A video of an earlier version of Autom is after the break.
Buff(ing) for BlizzCon: Raid preparation
Buff(ing) for BlizzCon is a bi-weekly fitness series written by ShrinkGeek authors Rafe Brox and Michael McGreevy. Join the WoW.com team in getting in shape for the ultimate WoW geek event: BlizzCon. Unless you're a super-casual player, there is a pretty good chance that you spend a lot of time both in and out of the game doing preparation work. From reading up on strategies, to farming materials for flasks and everything in between, there are countless ways that you can get yourself ready to take on the current shiny encounter in World of Warcraft. Unfortunately for many people, what they don't spend time thinking about before raid night is what they are going to be snacking on. If you're trying to make better food choices, this can be a serious roadblock. There aren't many guilds that will allow you to take a long enough AFK to prepare a healthy meal in the middle of a raid, so many players end up opting for "easy" food choices to satisfy a sudden onslaught of the Hungry debuff. The problem with that is that most "easy" food choices aren't all that good for you. When this type of itch is scratched, it's usually through something like a bag of chips or some sort of chemically ambiguous frozen meal, neither of which are really good choices if you're trying to eat wisely. Your likelihood of success in defeating a new boss fight is greatly increased if you prepare yourself for the encounter. Eating wisely is no different. I've got a few strategies that you can follow that just might keep you from seeing a diet Total Party Kill as a result of uncontrollable mid-raid snacking.
KiFit tells you how many calories you're not burning, other sad details of your unhealthy existence
Do we really need another gadget to tell us we're fat and we sleep badly? Yes, we do. The KiFit armband's packing some medically developed tech which measures your body temperature, how much you're sweating, and how much you're moving. From that info, it calculates your calorie burn rate and how peacefully you're sleeping. If you're like us, you're undoubtedly already aware that your slumber is like a nightly replay of the "Enter Sandman" video, but still, it's great to see gadgets that encourage a healthier lifestyle, right? The KiFit is available for $300 plus a $20 monthly subscription price -- and while it's a pretty neat little gizmo -- we'd suggest you might be better off paying for a gym membership you're never going to use.
An analysis of all the food and drink in WoW
Not long ago, a friend of mine from college asked me to resurrect his WoW account so he could get back into the game before Cataclysm comes out. The first week that he was back, he messaged me quite frequently with various questions about trends in raiding and PvP at level 80. I answered his questions without much thought until one afternoon, he sent me a different type of message. "Did you notice there is nothing but meat in WoW?" My thoughts stumbled over the question for a moment before he continued. "There is meat, fish and fruit, but no vegetables." (My friend became vegan since the last time he played WoW -- thus his sudden epiphany.) He then proceeded to tell me about a quest in Teldrassil where you gather spider meat for a kabob recipe. He said something along the lines of, "They're on a big freakin' tree, full of plants and they're eating spiders! Spiders!" I'll admit, he had a good point. Curious, I decided to start looking over the types of food in WoW to see just exactly what Azerothians eat.
Buff(ing) For BlizzCon: Choose your quests wisely
Buff(ing) for BlizzCon is a bi-weekly fitness series written by ShrinkGeek authors Rafe Brox and Michael McGreevy. Join the WoW.com team in getting in shape for the ultimate WoW geek event: BlizzCon. I had serious health issues from being way too heavy not that long ago. Without going into the whole story (you can read it all here if you're so inclined), it was imperative that I lose weight and keep it off. I'm still trying to reach my overall goal, 10 years later, but I'm a lot closer now. I won't kid you – it hasn't been easy, but no epic quest with an awesome reward ever is (and, unfortunately, there isn't a development team that is going to nerf the Getting In Shape quest once the elite raiders have beaten it). I'm about to state something that nobody in the diet and fitness industries really wants to admit, because doing so might make a potential customer take their particular approach to getting healthier less seriously. The fact of the matter is, though, that it's 100% true, and if they were to deny it, they would be lying. All diets and exercise programs work. Every. Single. One.
Our mistake, your gain: win one of fifteen free copies of Weightbot
I need a brain transplant. When Paul Haddad of Tapbots offered us fifteen license codes for a giveaway, I blithely assumed that they were for Pastebot, their cool cut, copy, and paste app for iPhone. I set up the giveaway yesterday and have been thrilled with the number of entries (you can still enter until midnight ET tonight, by the way). Well, Paul reminded me this morning that the giveaway was for Weightbot, as we wanted to do a tie-in to everyone's resolution to lose (or in some cases, gain) weight in the new year. After flogging myself for my lack of memory, I received another email from Paul stating that it would just be easier for him to create promo codes for Pastebot and we could keep the Weightbot codes as well. Thank you, Paul! What does that mean? We're giving away fifteen copies of Weightbot, too! This will be a completely different giveaway, and to enter you just need to leave a comment telling us how many pounds you'd like to lose or gain this year. Here are the rules: Open to legal US residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia who are 18 and older. To enter leave a comment telling us how many pounds you'd like to lose or gain, tracking it with Weightbot The comment must be left before Sunday, January 3, 2009, 11:59PM Eastern Standard Time. You may enter only once. Fifteen winners will be selected in a random drawing. Prizes: Promo Code for one copy of Weightbot (Value: US$1.99) Click Here for complete Official Rules. Now if Tapbots could only come out with a way of making my memory and organization better...
Fitbit tracker starts shipping, ready to monitor your fitness, sleep, piety
Better (a year) late than never, eh Fitbit? This time last year, there was quite a bit of buzz stirred up by a little gadget promising to monitor exercise intensity, distances traveled, sleep patterns, and calorie consumption. This pedometer with a degree and a 3D motion sensor has been incubating a lot longer than initially projected, but the first few units have finally trickled out to their eager users today. The entire device is essentially one big clip, attaching to any bit of clothing you have on you, while its base station can wirelessly collect data and upload it, via a pc, to a free online tracking dashboard. Add in the OLED display and a quoted battery autonomy of 10+ days, and the $99 price starts to appear pretty reasonable.[Via medGadget]
Scanning your way to a healthier diet with FoodScanner
Calories do count, and if you are among those who keep track of your daily intake and want an easy way to log what you eat, FoodScanner [iTunes link] may be just the iPhone app for you.On a trip to the grocery store or just your fridge, FoodScanner reads the bar code and matches it to a large database of food items. If the app is successful in finding a match, you'll get the product name, amount of calories in a single serving, fat, carbohydrates, and protein content. You can that information to a daily list to keep track of what you are eating, without the pain of doing it all on pencil and paper.While on a trip to my local Safeway, the bar code recognition worked really well. It just took a second or so to capture the info, and then match it to a database claiming to list over 200,000 food items.In many cases, the scan returned several items, but it was a simple task to select the correct item by name.
TUAW Fitness: An Apple a day makes the weight go away
I've struggled with my weight for a long time. In my free-wheeling post-college days I lived with my two best friends, sitting around playing video games, drinking beer and eating Taco Bell. I put on a lot of weight in a short amount of time with that diet and exercise schedule, topping out at 260 pounds. I decided enough was enough, and I strapped on my running shoes, straightened up my eating habits, and lost almost 90 pounds. In the years that have followed, my weight has gone up and down several times, and I'm at the point now that I need to get serious about losing weight again. According to my BMI, at 6'3" I should top out at 199 pounds, and right now I'm at 225. This time my weight loss should be easier since I have 3 secret weapons: my iPhone 3GS, my Mac and my AppleTV. Read on for my weight loss plan and how these Apple products will help me achieve my goals.
Punch your way to fitness in Shape Boxing Wii de Enjoy Diet
Despite its toony appearance, Shape Boxing Wii de Enjoy Diet regards itself more seriously than the boxing in Wii Sports. There are no Miis to be found here, more technical details (such as different boxing stances) are taken into consideration across the title's 28 lessons, and the game will dole out nutritional advice in a bid to get/keep you toned. Less seriously, you can punch bears, which we don't recall seeing in Rocky IV. Anyway, the overall vibe seems to be self-improvement.This releases in Japan on October 30th, and will use the Balance Board in some way. We're betting it could actually improve your fitness, based on the fact that we were wheezing, crimson-faced wrecks after one and a half minutes of Wii Sports boxing.%Gallery-31258%[Via Siliconera]
First Look: Edibles
If you're a loser and you're happy, it probably means that you are a successful dieter.Being a middle-aged computer geek means that I have been gaining weight (no, I'm not as "hefty" as Steve Wozniak). I am a member of the WeightWatchers Online program, but it's frustrating that I haven't been able to track my Points® with my iPhone. Well, the brilliant minds at Random Ideas, LLC have just released Edibles (link opens iTunes), which works with just about any diet program to help you watch what's going into your mouth.As a food journal, Edibles allows you to track whatever value your diet uses. For the Atkins diet, you'll be tracking carbs. On WeightWatchers, you have a certain number of Points® that you can ingest on a daily basis. If you exercise, Edibles deducts carbs, calories, or points so you can see the benefit of your workout. Edibles tracks on a daily and weekly basis, just as most of the major diet plans do. The app is available for US$5.99 in the App Store now, and is sure to be a hit with anybody who is fighting the battle of the bulge.
Mabinogi in open beta in March; Euros and Ozzies left out
Nexon, maker of Maple Story and other, weirder MMOs, has announced that their intriguing title Mabinogi will hit North America with an open beta on March 5th. However, this is for residents of North America only; gamers in Europe and Australia will be s.o.l. [note: adult language] until such time as Nexon feels they're ready to hit the rest of the world.There's apparently more to Mabinogi than previously suspected -- more than just aging the character over weeks, time is a much more involved element to the game. The storyline itself will evolve over generations, and a character's diet also affects its appearance. I'm all crazygonuts excited to play this, so expect a First Impressions from me shortly after launch!And make sure you check out the videos on their website -- they're short tutorials on how to get around and do things in the world, presented by a girl and her sheep. While a little broad in its humor, it's still cute and has some good tips in between the silliness.
Playing more and eating less
Staying active with Wii Sports and Dance Dance Revolution isn't the only way video games can help you lose weight. Sometimes, all you need is a distraction to keep you from overindulging your appetite. According to Cynthia Sass, RD, a nutritionist and spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association, playing with a portable can help you forget about food: "When you start to visualize your craving, you've already lost half the battle ... A video game occupies your eyes, your hands, and your mind." Of course, if you insist on playing games like Cooking Mama or Cheeseburger Town, you're probably not going to get the desired effect. Sitting in front of a chocolate cake while an oscillating fan blows its saccharine aroma towards you isn't going to be too helpful either. But if you can manage to avoid food-based games and afternoon desserts, and if you'd like to try something new to make you stop thinking about eating, grab your DS the next time your stomach starts asking for a snack. Maybe that'll do the trick. [Via Infendo]
Japan to use picture messaging for calorie counting
Leave it to the Japanese to be at the forefront of having the latest bleeding edge service for their customers. In the United States, we're lucky to get a calorie count of our meal when we go to our favorite restaurants. In Japan, though, all they'll need to do is snap a picture message of their meal and send it the Public Health Offices in Osaka, and ta-da -- the calorie count is give to you. Albeit, it's three days after you ate. Not exactly real-time, but at least you'll how bad you were to your body a few days back.. [Via Slashphone]
Put iPhoto on a diet
Avid users of iPhoto who also count their megs and gigs typically notice that the darling iLife app can quickly gobble up a good chunk of the hard drive. One practice that is sure to help inflate the size of your library is editing images. As it turns out, whenever you make edits and save, iPhoto duplicates the image, creating a backup; hence the usefulness of that 'Revert to Original' option. One problem with this system is that all these duplicates can pile up fast if you're an avid iPhoto editor - but thanks to some simple instructions in this MacRumors forum thread, you can put iPhoto on a diet. If you don't want to read through all the posts, Adriaan Tijsseling, the developer of ecto, endo and 1001 (an excellent Flickr client), has whittled out the meat to help get you on your way. Adriaan's post contains the simple commands to run in Terminal (along with an explanation of what is going on) that will effectively remove all the original copies of any images you have edited in iPhoto. While this obviously means you'll lose the ability to use that 'Revert' option (in case you try it, you won't break iPhoto; it's just that nothing happens), this could be a useful trick for anyone trying to reclaim every last byte of free space.
Wii Sports Experiment sheds nine pounds
While some folks are struggling just to stay out of the hospital when getting too amped up playing their Wii, Mickey DeLorenzo, a 25-year-old living in Philadelphia, decided to meld exercise and gaming together and further substantiate the most obvious research study of the year. His Wii Sports Experiment started in December of last year and ran for six whole weeks, and while he sought to keep his eating habits constant, he devoted 30 minutes per day to Wii Sports and monitored his weight, BMI, calories burned per session, body fat percentage, heart rate, and physical soreness. Mickey started out at 182 pounds, and after a month and a half of Wii workouts, whittled his weight down to 172 pounds, which he found quite amazing considering that this was the first substantial loss he had attained in over two years, and he never even cut back on the Eat 'N Park cookies (or similar). Moreover, according to The American Council on Exercise, he went from the "acceptable" category to the "fitness" category, and seemed to gain a huge boost of self-esteem in the process. So if the Subway diet just doesn't mesh with your taste buds, and you're desperate to find an excuse to game it up instead of going for a jog, be sure to hit the read link for all the encouragement you'd ever need, and click on through for a bit of footage from the entire process.[Via SMH]
The WoW Diet: 41 lbs in 90 days
Greg shed 41 lbs. from a 274-pound frame in just 3 months -- and did it playing World of Warcraft. Word?Dubbed "Warbiking," Greg strapped a keyboard onto the display of his stationary bike (Schwinn 213 Recumbent) and used a side table to operate his mouse. He hung a 46-inch Samsung LCD to hold his attention, outputting WoW from his XPS Gen 2 laptop. Truth be told, Warbiking was only part of the regimen, which included weightlifting, a low calorie diet, and even fasting; but WoW was the cornerstone for the weight loss, as Greg attests:"I really think the Warbiking had a LOT to do with how well I did, and how much I lost. I have done over *100* hours of cardio in three months, which is wild. There is NO WAY I could have done that without Warcraft ... it's [sic] ability to suck me in and make me ignore what I'm physically doing is amazing, and made this possible."Yo Blizzard, you payin' attention? This guy could totally be the next 'Jared.'[Thanks, Doc]
Wii looks to pump you up
According to IGN, Nintendo just might be trying to get you off of the couch and into a workout routine with the Wii, doing for your body what Brain Age on the DS did for your mind. They found this news via Bloomberg, which claims that Nintendo is in the process of making new diet-based software for the console.This idea sounds about right, but in what way could they guarantee an actual fitness experience through use of the Wiimote? Would they try to market another peripheral for the console or would the player just jog in place, for instance? Sure, we could imagine the Wiimote playing a role in some kind of exercise routine where stretching was a major aspect or perhaps some kind of yoga variant, but we know that is in no way going to pump you up.[Via Joystiq]
